


time is dancing

by hipsterophelia



Category: Cloud Atlas - All Media Types, Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Genre: Angst, M/M, Suicide, i was supposed to write fluff then this happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 01:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3709759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hipsterophelia/pseuds/hipsterophelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've pulled that trigger before and I will do it again, it's as simple as that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time is dancing

I wait throughout the night to make sure that there still is something beating in my chest - there is, for the rest. Something beating inside my chest, something incredibly stubborn. Would make it stop if I could. Not like that. Would like to go to sleep and then to never wake up so that I would never have to choose. (I do not know how I know to say that. As if my time of choice weren’t long past already

A bird crashed into the glass of the window (was it yesterday? Two days ago?). Broke its neck, dead before it could even sense fear. See, that is what I’m getting at.

Am better now - you wouldn’t believe me, but I am. There is a certain elegance in how it all has been laid out, carefully scripted and this is my role; I know, for I wrote the part myself. Everything has been leading up to this very moment.

Don’t say anything. I know you are simply dying to (was that insensitive? You will have to bear with me), but please don’t. You wouldn’t understand. There is always a turning point, an unavoidable site where you will have to choose, and truly, it wasn’t much of a choice. It is all about how it all, one day, will end, isn’t it? And if it is a matter of choice - what is easy, and what will prove much harder but then also will end in the same amount of pain as the first alternative - well.

Been walking across the room, walking around in circles, eventually closing my eyes, eventually, opening them again, and you are here, you are here - the next time I open my eyes, you will be here.  
          Yes, I saw you, no, you are not supposed to be here - there is a very legitimate reason that I left you there, content with just watching - you see, would I have rushed forward to you, I would probably never had been able to let go of you and that’s not how it all was supposed to end. It’s all a matter of choice, Sixsmith, that and knowing your place in the world. I’m glad that you showed up, though, I truly am. Told you to stay away, didn’t I?

Time is spinning around. Time is a hand of a clock, running around in circles, passing by without notice. Time is dancing and suddenly it’s morning again.  
          Still not sure about how many days I’ve actually lost by now.

Luger here, thirteen minutes to go - - - I would make music out of the rhythm of our heartbeats but there is no time for that now, is it? I don’t think I would be able to compose anything either way - there’s only that much music that can fit in to one single body, it’s done for, over, passed by, I’ve had my share and I’ve spent it and I’m grateful. It’s all a circle, we are only passing through, we will be back soon. Right back under those skies, sooner than you could ever expect.

You don’t even have to understand. I hope you don’t, because understanding would be a synonym for feeling the same and there we would be again, like this, again, and you were supposed to be happy. Can see it all in front of me, you with someone who would laugh at your jokes and actually try to understand all that it is you talk about - - -  
          Do you know happiness, Sixsmith? I mean, would you recognise it if it was right in front of you? Doubt I would. It’s all about colouring inside the lines and I’ve realised that there isn’t much happiness to be found if you don’t.

There’s a sense of bitter cold porcelain, a taste of stale in my mouth, a loaded gun between fingers that does not look like my own. But my kind never pulls the trigger, wasn’t that the whole point? (I did, of course, you already know that I did. I’ve pulled that trigger before and I will do it again, it’s as simple as that).

 

xx

 

I close my eyes and there you are, your hands around my wrists and it seems unlikely, how you weren’t present a second ago and then suddenly are, but I open my eyes and you are still present, you are not supposed to be here. I told you - you can’t save me; it’s a fact, you can’t save anybody but yourself and I will pull that trigger again. Sixsmith, why on earth are you here? There’s hundreds of questions I’d like to ask you and probably thousands of answers in that scientific mind of yours but I wonder if a thousand answers would be enough to actually reply.

Your fingers bend mine open, freeing that damned gun from my grip, throwing it across the room. Inside my head I’m screaming, panicking, it takes all of the little self control I have left to stay calm and I don’t even know if I succeed or not. You are hysteric, I can’t make sense of what you are saying, your hands are shaking and I would hold you but I’m afraid I can’t. I can’t, because I wouldn’t be able to let go. It’s as simple as that.

On the train south I plan my own funeral - you’ll make sure someone will be there, won’t you? It will be a horribly lonely affair otherwise - have broken more hearts than I’ve mended, surprised you still stick with me. There won’t be any flowers, absolutely no organ - I’m thinking a small piece by maybe Grieg on viola?  
          You are watching me from the other side of compartment as if I would do something reckless if you let me out of sight. Wouldn’t trust me on my own either.

_It’s alright,_ you say. _It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright._  
Wish I could believe you. I really do.

Corsica in winter is empty, deserted - the winds so indigent I would have thought it to be England if it weren’t for the scenery. Corsica in winter is lonely gulls circling over a grey seascape. Corsica in winter is two silhouettes illuminated by the starry night sky. Corsica in winter is a clutch of bullets and a gun thrown into the sea.  
          To make it clear, to explain just so that I will be able to say that I tried to do just that: I threw the Luger into those Mediterranean waves because it was a cross I couldn’t bear, because the thought of it, there, at the bottom of a bag in the sleazy hotel room we share, made a taste of stale rise in my mouth. It was a coward’s act, nothing else. Don’t even try to make it look like anything else.

Spread my ashes right here. Skip the funeral if possible. Throw me into the sea.

You are laughing. Was it something I said? Eventually, maybe, I don’t remember, it’s fine though, for you are laughing. Can’t recall the last time I saw you do that. It’s raining cats and dogs, we are hiding from ice cold drops outside a small shop selling overpriced wine and the owner is watching us with suspicion from inside and knowing you right, you will probably buy a bottle for money you can’t really afford to put a side, just to be kind. Because it’s what you do. Am smoking, watching your profile, you are here, you are here, you are here; restlessly kicking gravel across the pavement, laughing, blushing, peering back at me, your hands buried deeply in your pockets. There’s a silver lining there, somewhere. The sun will break through the clouds and I will finish my cigarette and we will walk home side by side and I will be able to say that it was in fact supposed to be like this.

We’ll sit on the floor and drink wine directly from the bottle and you will try to drag words out of me and I will feel like a hermit crab in an ill-fitting shell. My smile spreads like cracks in concrete, while yours is genuine, as if you are genuinely glad to be here, to be like this. Figure I might as well get drunk, close the curtains and pretend that everything is normal - that’s what you would want me to do, isn’t it? Resting my head in your lap - there is something I should tell you but I can’t seem to remember what, can’t find the right words.

There is something in your eyes, something new, something that was not buried among that shallow green before. You say you love me, which - well, that makes one of us. There’s a file that I can’t seem to let go of, a sextet, an atlas of the clouds, the only thing that was ever worth something - something that I poured the last of my vitality into and I’m here, alive and breathing but mostly just breathing. You watch me as if I will fall apart if you touch me, but I’m not that fragile - at least I’m not that fragile yet. Maybe you are made of glass and maybe my heart has finally turned into stone - still you are the one trying to see through me.

This might be love. Figure I should tell you before its too late but everything about what they call love is so heavily burdened with clichés, can’t find a way to explain it. But it might be. This. You and I. Us. Love. Don’t say it out loud though, dear - - - _let’s go dancing._ You have two left feet and no sense of pace whatsoever, but I will take your hands and spin you around under the stars, and I would write music about a night like this one if there was anything left to write about.

You fill the room with flowers because that’s what I used to do and I close my eyes and pretend it’s Cambridge and that none of this ever happened. That I will open my eyes and be back in a lavish hotel suit overwhelmed with flowers - flowers for Rufus, flowers for nights spent with strangers, flowers for my bad conscience - and you will be there and this will all be a part of some bizarre nightmare. And I will go on with my life and there will be no more Belgian chateaus and stolen Lugers and _sometimes you slay the dragon, sometimes the dragon slays you_ , it doesn’t matter because the dragon was no more than a mere illusion. But we both know in our hearts that I wouldn’t undo any part of it.  
          You fill the room with flowers and maybe it is because you feel bad for me but I don’t play the martyr part very well because I never asked for it (the thing with martyrdom is that no one asks for it, it just happens to you). It looks like Cambridge, if you ignore the cracks in the ceiling and the peeling wallpapers. We can’t go back, though, you understand that, don’t you, Sixsmith? We can never go back to that.

I want to scream at you, to tell you that this is all we’ll ever get and we barely even have this, but I’m useless and I can’t even do that and there is something in my chest that still beats and beats and beats.

You are too good for me. This is all too good to be true and the point with thought experiments is that they are built on facts, not fiction; that’s philosophy to you. If it was built on fiction it wouldn’t be defined as a science. And you, Sixsmith, are too damn good for me. I tell you so and you deny it within seconds, looking almost terrified as you do so. Of course, you are lying. Don’t even know if you are aware that you do.

There is something with the southern air that makes everything seem so much easier, so much more logical, and I am finally colouring inside the lines I live between and you see it now, don’t you? There was never an happy ending in store for the two of us - you could as well have counted me dead when I left Victoria in early summer - I feel as if I have been no more than a shell ever since.

 

 

xx

 

We both knew that we would never see those Corsican stars again, not in this life at least, as I stormed out that morning, didn’t we? It’s alright, we’ll get another chance, we’ll do it all over, perhaps make it right this time in - - -

          Sixsmith, you know what Shakespeare said about punctuality?

Back in Bruges again, a sense of bitter cold porcelain, a taste of stale in my mouth, a loaded gun between trembling fingers. There’s the squeak of a door slowly opening. There’s a crash, a sound of glass, a bird dead before it can even sense fear - and with it, every chance at eventual happiness, is long gone.

_Rather three hours too early then one minute too late._


End file.
